Would rulers and guidelines be a welcome feature in Snagit?

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Adding rulers and guidelines to the Snagit interface.It's a series of ideas I have to make Snagit more Designer-friendly.In a layout, having guidelines can help to place the objects and text more precisely.This is one of a few ideas I wanted to present the Snagit team with.

What do you think? Do you think this feature could be interesting or not?

Folks - words are hard, and I don't want anyone to be disappointed - so here is some clarification.

Nick suggested "rulers and guidelines". We've added "snapping" to Snagit:Mac and its coming for Snagit:Windows. Similar ideas, but not the same... Snapping helps you align things to edges and other objects.

My post clarifies what we have done/are doing now. There are differences between snapping (which is something we are committed to already) vs rulers and guides - which we are still willing to accept feedback on.

Dang, folks snapping and alignment guides are too different things. The ruler is present in the simplest programs so why not in SnagIt. We have gone around with this request during the "SnagIt Questions round up". All users are not created equal, some might want things that others do not want so the voting process does not work for that feature.

Snapping, Rulers and alignment guides are very important to some users, so just DO IT. Creating the three to four features in SnagIt along with the snapping feature is like dangling a carrot in front of the users. These features are not enough to excite me.

SnagIt has made their decision pretty clear above by one of their developers.

A grid which was visible for precise alignment would not go amiss either.Just ideas to make Snagit better to work with.Guidelines and rulers are superb tools if you are designing something visually pleasing to the eye. Symmetry and positioning are everything if you like your work to look professional. First impressions count.With the deepest respect to the Snagit developers.Who knows, it might draw a different crowd who want powerful graphics features without the heavy weight requirements of design programs.I would like to open Snagit and work with the tools without having to go to a different programme and do part of the work there and then import it back again.

These are only suggestions, but I think it would help the more perfectionist of users to be content. We can't expect Snagit to be CorelDraw or Illustrator because we are paying a fraction of graphic software. But not everyone wants all the features in those software programs because their projects are modest. Graphic Design programmes cater for the professional. However, they invite the modest designer too and give them a user-friendly interface with a small learning curve. (depending on what you want to achieve)

Down-side, you need a powerful machine to render the graphics and space to host the files which are quite large when effects and layers are saved together.

Snagit is lightweight, reasonably fast and simple to use after a small learning curve.That is what most consumers want.Then there is a smaller crowd of enthusiasts, who like a bit more perfection in their work, and they are equally drawn to the programme because of it's unique capture features.

All text boxes have 8 handles and snapping is simple if the boxes are snapped to one of those 8 handles. Attached is a simplistic creation of a fishbone layout in PowerPoint. The layout is not "Snapped" to the handles but aligned with the horizontal guide with more precision. Sometimes in order to save the space on the page, one uses alignment guides to squeeze that space. I hope you folks at SnagIt understand what I am talking to about and why Snapping along with rulers and guides are important to be included in SnagIt. What Techsmith created with Snapping in SnagIt 2018 is nothing new to the designer world, PowerPoint and other programs have been using that feature for a long time.

I hear what you are saying. RUlers and guides would be a restoration of a feature that was once in there, but your graphic above is showing ... graphic design and possibly beyond the scope of what is needed in a screenshot /annotation app. Just saying.I had the exact same thought about using stairs. It is a great example of needing precise layout﻿

If you add rulers, guides and a grid...perfection is at your fingertips in a flash.Snapping object is more rustic and a bit more time-consuming in my view.I'll go with what the majority decides. My intention is not a revolution, just a brainstorm of ideas to get things rolling smoothly.Even Windows Paint has rulers and gridlines!

OK folks, Doug is asking you if this feature is something we would like to see in SnagIt so vote on it. Whether you use it or not, think about the functionality of it. I have cast my VOTE in favor of it.

Doug, appreciate you taking the lead in asking the users for their choice. Hopefully the users will vote on it because I have been passionate about this feature and it is helpful to me and maybe some other users. This feature will define SnagIt as more than just a screen capture and an editor software.

a) rulers only (where as you move objects, their location/size is reflected in the ruler)b) rulers with (user definable) guides so as you move objects you can easily snap to guidesc) grids (with/or without rulers - I'm assuming configurable grid spacing, comments?)

Agreed. Grid only occasionally. It is helpful, but as long as we see the rulers and adjustable guides, I feel we've scored big time.This way Snagit gains independence and can be used as an only design and capture without needing other software. Snagit is light and easy on system resources. Corel and Photoshop are Ram eaters in a bit way.Have a great day.Regards,Nick

A lot of the questions that arise are from folks who want it to stay true to the core intent: FAST screen capture and annotation. Keep your ideas coming though. Even if one is a bad fit it can lead to something that would be a great and useful fit.

Responding to Rick's bloating statement, there has been enough bloat from ver 11x.x to 2018, here is the comparison SnagIt 2018 = 213,478 KB v/s SnagIt v11.4.1.195 = 69,241 KB, a little more would not hurt.

Doug, another improvement will be the to improve the speed that the whole interface loads, v2018 is sluggish compared to v11.1.4.195. it took 7 seconds to open the capture box.

Computers are all about less keystrokes and clicks.

Thank you Doug for taking the initiative to address the users' concerns.

the increase in Snagit's size for 2018 is almost entirely related to OCR. (so that uptick was a one time event...)

we keep an eye on "load speed" and we have that down as a candidate for 2019 focus (can't promise it will make the cut, but we do pay attention to it... but, if you think load speed is super important - you could influence our decision process by making a separate issue out of it and of course... votes matter.)

Hi,Apart from the OCR issue, do you mean adding rulers and guides might make a difference in loading time? Screen capture is acceptable when the text-grabbing tool is not active. It does take a while to process the OCR capture. It's pretty accurate, but some characters are missed depending on the type of text to be captured and if there are any foreign characters or symbols in the capture.Are you thinking of improving accuracy?Is this going to cause loading time to increase then?

Snagit strives to be lighter than other software used in screen capture and video. OCR is a considerable challenge. I have seen other programs with more accuracy, but its software that costs much more than Snagit. I don't expect it to behave like any of the following:

Adobe Acrobat.

OmniPage Standard.

ABBYY FineReader.

Readiris.

PDFelement.

Soda PDF.

PaperPort Professional.

ABBYY PDF Transformer+

It would be worth trying response times for these different apps and making notes of the type of PC or Mac used and its load capacity.Processors, Ram, graphics card... etc.One computer will differ considerably from another; not everyone has a laptop or computer powerful enough to meet the expected graphic and rendering speeds required.

I have made suggestions based on my personal needs and expectations. I understand many users will be satisfied with a much more straightforward interface and won't see the point of suggested improvements, perhaps until they try them for themselves and see the results.Good, made better!Just like you can't expect Snagit to perform a task like a full graphics design program.Snagit should be easy to use and yet meet the expectations of persons with graphic design experience looking for a screen capture software which has the necessary tools to do a decent layout job.The price is very reasonable for such a versatile tool.Do you only offer English and German as supported languages?Spanish would be interesting for the future.

Thanks for listening and for commenting on the plans you have, and for making us (users) part of it.

On topic: no I don't think rulers/guides would make any significant difference in load time

Off topic... (move to separate issue if you'd like to continue this discussion further; but here are my quick thoughts...)

OCR does take a noticeable amount of time to load/get ready... (That impacts the editor experience more than capture - but many people edit immediately after to capture - so that's a nuance many won't appreciate)

Snagit includes OCR "language modules" for English and German because those are the languages currently localized for. Each language module is pretty size-able... therefore - at some point, we may allow those to be downloaded separately. (I'm just speculating; not a plan at the moment...)

Accuracy - for the most part - not our thing. If you look in our about box, you can see we license code from ABBYY. As they get better, we'll get better. That said, we have a few small things on our backlog we want to do to make the integration better - but these aren't anything dramatic.

Many thanks for updating the info. I don't expect any miracles, and I don't expect you to improve just yet. I'm only sharing what I find and hope it will be of some use for future versions. Not having the tools you have now, kept my on version 7 until a month or so when I upgraded to 2017.Lots of new stuff but in my view some missing to be a nearly perfect tool for any user no matter how demanding or professional he/she is.That is why I started writing in the forum.Not as a way of complaining (don't get me wrong) but as a way of sharing my thoughts and my needs (always reasonable) to put forward to the team.I love your software. I've been using it for ages but just to capture video and images. Only recently have I discovered it could do much more.... so why not go the extra mile?

As for the Spanish language, I live in Spain, and I know there would be a market for this programme. Spanish is spoken in many countries, not just Spain.Just an idea.Could give you a hand with translating. I'm an English/Spanish native.Best of both world you could say.

I'd be willing to pay for your trouble naturally. A pro version and a standard might be an idea you'd consider. I'm a bit lazy because I'm in a rush most of the time and Snagit is fine to do the little jobs, but I thought how amazing if some of the important things could be done in the same app. A time saver most would appreciate, not to mention that your software would take a leap forward and join the big guys so to speak.

I'm a newbie round these parts, so excuse me if I don't know where to post. :)Getting better I hope.

Setting Chinese aside, isn't Spanish the 2nd most WIDELY spoken language in the world? From what I recall, Mexican Spanish is the most ubiquitous, Castilian Spanish only being spoken in Europe? How do you say "Corel" in Spanish Nick? "Hhhhorel?"

With a Spanish accent, imagine "Korel Drau" Spanish are not very good with the Ws except in Wiskie.You'd be amazed how many Latinos live in the US alone! Florida is practically Spanish (Catalan). There are variations in the language in accent and forms, but basically, graphic design is still the same lingo for all. Most graphic designers nowadays have English as the second language, so they are not bothered about the language barrier. A smaller minority perhaps could benefit from this, and surely the Spaniards would like it in their own language.With an exception to the rule...At the moment the Catalan people are trying to break-away from Spain, so they would also like the software in Catalan.